The FIA is introducing new French GP tests to ensure the rear wings don’t bend too much and to give some teams a straight line speed advantage on the straights.
But Vasseur is unfazed by what happened as he says the new testing process effectively changed the rules and violated teams that fully adhered to the rules as they were written.
For a little outfit like Alfa Romeo, he thinks the optimization is extremely unfair and doesn’t understand why such an expensive change was introduced in the middle of the season.
“We will have time for it [change the wing]but it’s going to cost us a fortune, ”he said.
“We all struggle to save money, to talk, to have fewer people on a track, and then we have things like this that … it’s just a joke. Joke for me “
Vasseur believes the impact on lap time will be minimal and he is concerned that the way the Flexi Wing saga has been handled means that other areas of the car could also be exposed to mid-season changes.
When asked how much time difference there was between the wings, he said, “Honestly, it will be marginal.
“We played a couple of times in a row and the difference wasn’t that big. But it’s not about my concern. Is that why we’re not going to change the weight of the car next week? Because a team cannot reach the limit … “
Vasseur believes the FIA acted unfairly because a number of teams had created wings that fully met the rules as they were written at the time, but they are the ones facing expensive changes now.
“We had the scheme with maximum deformation and load, and I think we did [at Alfa Romeo] aren’t smarter than the others, ”he said.
“Everyone was sticking to the limit and the FIA decided to change the limit. It’s a bit of a surprise, but they’ve changed the load and deformation over the season.
“It’s not the introduction of a new test [that is the issue]or a new way of doing the test is by changing a value. And for me this is the first time that we see something like this.
“Because when you are at the limit, when you have done a good job, you have to produce new grand pianos. In terms of cost savings, it’s a huge, huge, huge effort. “
He added: “The business of Formula 1 engineers and designers is to design parts at the limit of the regulations.
“If you change the rules as the season progresses, you have to design new parts and the teams who say they are not affected are joking.”
Red Bull team principal Christian Horner estimated the wing saga will cost teams forced to switch wings around $ 500,000.
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